A bright, luminous ball of crackling electricity was captured on camera hovering over a field near a couple's home.
The clip, which is possibly the clearest video of the phenomenon ever captured, was filmed on Wednesday evening during an intense period of stormy weather in Alberta, Canada.
It shows the ball lightning hovering and moving slowly across a grassy field around 1km away.
"After a rather vicious lightning strike, we saw a ball of fire kind of... about 20 feet above the ground," said Ed Pardy who filmed the spectacle while watching it happen with his wife.
His footage also captured the moment that the ball of lightning vanished after about 23 seconds.
"Before it went out there was a bit of a pop and the whole thing kind of disintegrated and went away," he said. "I was glad it was far away from our house."
Ball lightning is a particularly rare meteorological event that happens under very specific circumstances and which is very difficult to reproduce on demand in a laboratory.
While there have been a small number of reported sightings over the years, this one is particularly special because of the quality of the footage to go along with it.
My grandmother was also terrified during thunderstorms but hers was due to noise. It reminded her of the Blitz. Our city was the worst hit outside London and suffered 95% buildings damaged or destroyed.
My parents had a ball of lightning enter their room when they were on holiday in the Lake District, UK. It came in through an open window, went around the room and out through the same window.
There are comments saying it’s just a power line arcing / moving horizontally along a power line. Without knowing where the video was taken, that’s hard to verify with the video quality. But if you play the video at 0.25x and full resolution, the lens flare seems to be a couple of sustained points rather than a single point of light. And when it ‘disintegrates’ it also seems to disintegrate into the same points. Watch from ~30 seconds at 0.25 speed. If anyone knows where specifically the video was taken, then you can check for powerlines. Still a cool video either way.
Yeah unfortunately it seems arcing along a powerline is the most likely explanation rather than genuine ball lightning. Check out the top comments in the Reddit post. Possible geolocation from Redditor: https://www.google.com/maps/place/53°51'40.1"N+114°19'43.8"W/@53.8611389,-114.3288333,641m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d53.8611389!4d-114.3288333?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDYzMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8610477,-114.3489969,3a,25.1y,83.36h,92.39t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sEImHETw0ZGHF_8fJUl8nmw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail... [More]
Indeed, the ball is way too large for how the ball lightnings are usually described. And way too blue, usually they are described as yellowish in color.
My brother in law and his dad was working in the field when ball lightening came across the field and when it got to a fence it went up and over the fence then back down and continued on its way. I've never witnessed ball lightening but I was the recipient of an indirect lightening strike. The lightening struck the barns lightening rod and traveled down into the ground and then I guess back up into the milk tank that I was leaning against as I was watching the storm. Well I didn't get zapped but I was gently pushed off the milk tank as if by unseen hands. That weirded me out just a little.
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